Poetry in my Inbox

The Writer’s Almanac appears in my email in-box as if magic brought her (I think of her as a her) to me. Sometimes I post the daily poem on Facebook, sometimes I just read it over and over, sometimes I don’t even open her message at all. I’m not a Prairie Home Companion fan. Garrison Keillor doesn’t do it for me. I like Vinyl Cafe with Stuart McLean so much better.

But Keillor’s got game when it comes to finding poetry to brighten my day or engage my thinking muscle.

Yesterday’s poem just made me feel good. It reminded me that not all strangers are worthy of fear, not all government employees lack imagination or a desire for excellence, and sometimes a little chocolate shared is magic, too.

At the Toll Boothby Marilyn Donnelly

They are serving Toll House cookiesat the toll booth on the Maine Turnpike.Someone peeps out through pleated drapesof a swollen ebony hearseto see if there is some mistake.But no, attendants are movingdeftly among clogged carsbalancing silver trays heaped highwith succulent cookiesstill warm with chocolate oozingover the fluted rims.Small dogs gather to catch the excessas cars continue to pile upeven in the exact change laneyet no one seems to mind the delay,The Toll House cookies are golden and good.The withered face peering outfrom the silent hearse
fills with delicate memoriesof an uncomplicated childhood.

Do more …

Do a little more of that work which you have sometimes confessed to be good, which you feel that society and your justest judge rightly demands of you. Do what you reprove yourself for not doing. Know that you are neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with yourself without reason. Let me say to you and to myself in one breath, Cultivate the tree which you have found to bear fruit in your soil.
- Henry David Thoreau